” President Obama is unveiling a $3.99 trillion budget that is “designed to bring middle class economics into the 21st Century,” the White House announced Monday.

The proposed budget “invests in helping working families make their paychecks go further, preparing hardworking Americans to earn higher wages, and creating the infrastructure that allows businesses to thrive and create good, high-paying jobs,” the White House said in a statement.

To pay for new tax credits and other programs involving education, child care, paid leave, and new road and bridge construction, the budget calls for tax hikes on wealthier Americans by closing certain loopholes.

Congressional Republicans said the president’s proposals — many of which leaked out in advance of Monday’s announcement — involve too many tax hikes and high-spending programs.”

Here are just a few of the goodies to be redistributed by the State under “Uncle” Barack’s proposed budget :

” Among the economic plans in the proposed budget:

• A child care tax credit of up to $3,000 per child.

• $750 million for a Department of Education preschool development program, an increase of $500 million.

• More than $3 billion for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education.

• A $500 tax credit for “second earners” in working families.

• A program encouraging paid leave programs for employees.

• Two years of community college tuition for qualified students, a program that would cost $60 billion over 10 years.

” The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced on March 12th that the total cost of employing a state or local government worker is 45% more than an equivalent worker in the private sector.

For the month of December 2013, employers in private industry spent an average of $29.63 per employee hour worked, but the equivalent cost for a government worker averaged $42.89 per hour. Not only do government employees average 33% higher pay than those in the private sector, their pension and retirement benefit costs are now an incredible 254% higher also. Given that compensation formulas for federal, state, and local government are comparable, it should come as no surprise that this year spending by the U.S. government will exceed revenue by an all-time high of $744.2 billion, and our gross national debt is a stunning $18.5 trillion. ”

” As part of our countdown to the new year, here are Heritage’s top five must-see charts of 2013.”

Each American’s Share of Publicly Held Debt

” As Washington lawmakers continue to spend more and pile on debt, each American’s share of public debt has risen to $36,000—about six times more than in 1970—and is set to rise astronomically in coming years. Without reform, the government will have borrowed $135,547 in public debt for each American, or almost three times the current median income, by 2036. This chart shows that serious consequences lie ahead if the government continues on its current path of reckless spending with no reform in sight.”

” If you weighed 1,000 pounds, would people notice you lost weight if you went down to 999 pounds?

In Congress, the Republicans feared there would be another shutdown they would be blamed for. They compromised with Democrats and presented a budget of wimps. During the next ten years, they will cut spending by $23 billion. The sequester, which would have cut the budget by much more than that, was done away with for fear it would keep politicians from wasting more money. What about the debt ceiling that we will have to raise? The Democrats complain about trickle-down economics in which the rich invest in the economy, create jobs, and purchase expensive things that again require people to service them. They practice it all the time when they privately invest their money to produce a return that is much larger than what retired people receive from Social Security.”

” The D.C. press corps was giddy last night, declaring that the fiscal crisis had ended. Senators praised “honorable friends” from “great states,” congress members gave standing O’s to their stalwart leaders, and the president saluted bipartisanship while ridiculing Republicans, bloggers, activists and pretty much anyone else who dared oppose him.

To help visualize how up the creek we find ourselves, I created an infographic.”

” Irrational situations provoke irrational responses. Ted Cruz may not have mapped out a winning strategy to end Obamacare, but he energized millions of Howard Beales yelling, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.” “

The $328 billion increase shattered the previous high of $238 billion set two years ago.

The giant jump comes because the government was replenishing its stock of “extraordinary measures” — the federal funds it borrowed from over the last five months as it tried to avoid bumping into the debt ceiling.”

” Once again the media are full of talk about dysfunction and default, as the partial government shutdown threatens to linger until the federal government hits the limit of its borrowing capacity, possibly on Oct. 17. The parties in Congress are still far apart on passing a budget bill to keep the government running, and Republicans are also promising not to raise the debt ceiling without some spending reforms.

Back in that summer of discontent I talked to a journalist who was very concerned about the “dysfunction” in Washington. So am I. But I told her then what’s still true today: that the real problem is not the dysfunctional process that’s getting all the headlines, but the dysfunctional substance of governance. Congress and the president will work out the debt ceiling issue, if not by October 17 then a few days later. The real dysfunction is a federal budget that doubled in 10 years, unprecedented deficits as far as the eye can see, and a national debt bursting through its statutory limit of $16.699 trillion and heading toward 100 percent of GDP.”

” What in the world is China up to? Over the past several years, the Chinese government and large Chinese corporations (which are often at least partially owned by the government) have been systematically buying up businesses, homes, farmland, real estate, infrastructure and natural resources all over America.

In some cases, China appears to be attempting to purchase entire communities in one fell swoop. So why is this happening? Is this some form of “economic colonization” that is taking place? Some have speculated that China may be intending to establish “special economic zones” inside the United States modeled after the very successful Chinese city of Shenzhen. Back in the 1970s, Shenzhen was just a very small fishing village, but now it is a sprawling metropolis of over 14 million people.

Initially, these “special economic zones” were only established within China, but now the Chinese government has been buying huge tracts of land in foreign countries such as Nigeria and establishing special economic zones in those nations. So could such a thing actually happen in America?

Well, according to Dr. Jerome Corsi, a plan being pushed by the Chinese Central Bank would set up “development zones” in the United States that would allow China to “establish Chinese-owned businesses and bring in its citizens to the U.S. to work.” Under the plan, some of the $1.17 trillion that the U.S. owes China would be converted from debt to “equity”.

As a result, “China would own U.S. businesses, U.S. infrastructure and U.S. high-value land, all with a U.S. government guarantee against loss.” Does all of this sound far-fetched? Well, it isn’t. In fact, the economic colonization of America is already far more advanced than most Americans would dare to imagine.

So whenever you see CNOOC or Sinopec, you can replace those names with the Chinese government. The Chinese government essentially runs both of those companies.

And as you can see from the following list compiled by the Wall Street Journal, those two companies have been extremely aggressive in buying up rights to oil and natural gas all over the nation…

Oklahoma: Sinopec has a one-third interest in 215,000 acres in a broader $2.5 billion deal with Devon Energy.

Texas: Cnooc acquired a one-third interest in Chesapeake Energy’s 600,000 acres in the Eagle Ford Shale in a $2.16-billion deal.

Wyoming: Cnooc has a one-third stake in 800,000 acres in northeast Colorado and southeast Wyoming after a $1.27 billion pact with Chesapeake Energy. Sinopec gained a one-third interest in Devon Energy’s 320,000 acres as part of a larger $2.5 billion deal.

Gulf of Mexico: Cnooc Ltd. separately acquired minority stakes in some of Statoil ASA’s leases as well as six of Nexen Inc.’s deep-water wells.

” President Obama sure was excited about his speech yesterday. He talked for more than an hour in sweeping, grandiose terms about everything that’s happened since he became President, and everything that’s still going to happen.

If only more of it were true.
Here are three major whoppers Obama tried to sell yesterday.”

” Senator Cruz took on the GOP establishment about what he suspects are shady tactics on raising the debt ceiling. The man has guts, unlike most Washington politicians.

“The senior senator from Arizona urged this body to trust the Republicans,” Cruz said, referring to Senator John McCain. “Let me be clear, I don’t trust the Republicans. I don’t trust the Democrats and I think a whole lot of Americans likewise don’t trust the Republicans or the Democrats because it is leadership in both parties that has got us into this mess.” “

” Only 4 percent of Americans think guns and gun control are an important problem facing the country, according to Gallup, and far more Americans are concerned about the economy, unemployment and the federal debt.”

U.S. taxpayers have been responsible for about 20 percent of those bailouts, or approximately $17 billion so far, even as the Eurozone continues to crumble and the debt crisis spreads to Italy and Spain.

” Their own plan doesn’t even come close to balancing, of course, and they’re not interested in other ideas to get there. The first Republican amendment they torpedoed yesterday called for increasing federal spending at a clip of “only” 3.4 percent per year over the next decade, rather than the major acceleration that Democrats have advanced. The second proposed making it more procedurally difficult to pass a budget that does not balance with ten years. Watch as each Democrat-aligned committee member votes in lockstep against these provisions. Make no mistake, they are explicitly rejecting a balanced federal budget (the roll call begins at the 1:15 mark):

As a point of fact, Johnson and Sessions are correct on these counts. The Hill and other news organizations have confirmed that Democrats’ budget numbers registerat most $800 billion in deficit reductions over ten years, even setting aside its accelerated spending course. Their exploitation of the unrealistic CBO baseline — which we explained yesterday — renders a number of their “cut” claims even more dubious. Especially dishonest was Murray’s statement (not included the shortened version of the video), er, “in rebut” to Sessions’ amendment, in which she claimed that the new budget, plus previous savings, add up to the Simpson-Bowles recommended level of $4 trillion in deficit relief. Between phony gimmicks and double-counting, she’s not even in the ballpark of $4 trillion, which is probably why Sessions felt compelled to use words like “lie” throughout the hearing. I’ll leave you with liberal commentator Ezra Klein expressing…some skepticism over the Democrats’ first budgetary offering since 2009:

” They didn’t see it coming last time either. Back in 2007, President Bush, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and just about every prominent voice in the financial world were all predicting that we would experience tremendous economic prosperity well into the future. In fact, as late as January 2008 Bernanke boldly declared that “the Federal Reserve is not currently forecasting a recession.” At the time, only the “doom and gloomers” were warning that everything was about to fall apart. And of course we all know what happened. But just a few short years later, history seems to be repeating itself. Barack Obama, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and almost every prominent voice in the financial world are all promising that the U.S. “economic recovery” is going to continue even though Europe is coming apart like a 20 dollar suit. But the economic fundamentals tell a different story. Our national debt is more than $6,000,000,000,000 larger than it was back in 2008, the number of Americans on food stamps just hit another brand new all-time record, and the bankers up on Wall Street are selling gigantic mountains of the exact same kind of toxic derivatives that caused so much trouble the last time around. But all of our “leaders” swear that everything is going to be okay. You can believe them if you want, but denial is not just a river in Egypt, and another crash is inevitably coming.

Sadly, many Americans are not even going to see the crash coming because they still have faith in the “experts”. They haven’t figured out that the “experts” really do not know what they are doing.

The blind are leading the blind, and in the end the results are going to be absolutely tragic.

The following are 10 hilarious examples of how clueless our leaders are about the economy…

#1 When I first came across the following chart the other day, it made me chuckle. It is a chart that supposedly tells us the “probability” of a recession, and it was taken from the website of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. According to the chart, right now there is a 0.16% chance of a recession… ”

” Senator Patty Murray, the Democratic chair of the Senate Budget Committee, finally released a budget today. Year over year, in this proposed budget, spending jumps dramatically.

For instance, from this year’s budget to next year’s proposed budget, spending would increase by $162 billion. This year, the federal government will spend $3.599 trillion; under Murray’s budget, the federal government would be on track to spend even more.

Over the next decade, spending under Murray’s budget would increase by 62 percent. Here’s a chart from the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee detailing the increase in spending over the next decade: ” (see above)

” There has been no shortage of dire warnings about the mounting US national debt, but President Obama is now offering a different assessment: no big deal.

“We don’t have an immediate crisis in terms of debt,” President Obama said in an exclusive interview with George Stephanopoulos for “Good Morning America.” “In fact, for the next 10 years, it’s gonna be in a sustainable place.”

It’s an assessment that will throw cold water on the latest attempt to achieve a so-called grand bargain to reduce the deficit. After all, a grand bargain would require excruciatingly difficult decisions for both sides – for Republicans, it would mean raising taxes, and for Democrats, cutting future spending on cherished programs like Social Security and Medicare. If there is no crisis, why would either side do it?

So, what happens if this latest effort to reach a deficit agreement falls through? Once again, the president’s answer was, essentially, no big deal.

“Ultimately, it may be that the differences are just too wide” to get a deal, President Obama said. “That won’t create a crisis. It just means that we will have missed an opportunity.”

” While the sequester is widely advertised as cutting spending over a ten year period, there is no actual reduction in overall spending levels. Rather, the sequester slows the overall growth in spending slightly between 2013 and 2023, with spending increasing by $2.40 trillion during that time period. Spending grows 51 percent, or $1.81 trillion, with sequestration between 2013 and 2021, the period when automatic spending procedures are to be enforced.”

” Never let it be said that President Obama has failed to spend time with Republican leaders in seeking an alternative to automatic budget cuts that are due to hit most federal departments Friday. On Wednesday, for example, the president gave GOP lawmakers as much as seven minutes, a rare face-to-face encounter that the White House described as a “meeting.”

The White House’s characterization of this momentary huddle at the Capitol as a meeting illuminates Mr. Obama’s strategy in dealing with Republicans on the budget cuts and other fiscal deadlines.”

” The federal government, the nation’s largest consumer and investor, is cutting back at a pace exceeded in the last half-century only by the military demobilizations after the Vietnam War and the cold war.

The reductions are designed to be indiscriminate, cutting everything from air traffic control to nursery schools.

And the turn toward austerity is set to accelerate on Friday if the mandatory federal spending cuts known as sequestration start to take effect as scheduled. Those cuts would join an earlier round of deficit reduction measures passed in 2011 and the wind-down of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that already have reduced the federal government’s contribution to the nation’s gross domestic product by almost 7 percent in the last two years.”

Left unsaid in all this talk of sequestration , budget “cuts” and austerity is the fact that if this government cannot even find a way to scale back annual growth by a measly 2% without “catastrophic” consequences then ANY HOPE for getting the deficit under control and limiting the endless growth of government is hopeless . If this is in fact the case then we are doomed . You’d better brush up on your Chinese .

See Also :

” Rush Limbaugh opened his show this afternoon proclaiming that for the first time in his career, he was ashamed of his country.

Why? Limbaugh explained that both political parties in Washington refused to stop spending and used alarmist scare tactics every time anyone proposed cuts to government programs.

“To be watching all of this, to have my intelligence – all of us – to have our common sense and intelligence insulted the way it is….it just makes me ashamed,” Limbaugh explained, “Seriously man, here we get worked up over 44 billion dollars – that’s the total amount of money that will not be spent that was scheduled to be spent this year.”

Limbaugh added that the government would continue to spend more money this year than last year in spite of the sequester cuts.”

” President Obama has been highlighting, with increasing urgency, all the ways in which the sequester – the across-the-board cuts to defense and nondefense discretionary spending scheduled to hit at the end of next week – would be bad for average Americans and could do serious damage to the economy.

What he hasn’t said, but what’s abundantly clear from looking at where the cuts would hit, is that the sequester also would make virtually all of Mr. Obama’s second-term legislative agenda, including a few items that have Republican support, essentially dead on arrival.

At an event Tuesday with first responders whose jobs could be eliminated by the sequester, Obama spelled out the consequences of allowing the cuts to take effect: “This is not an abstraction,” he said. “People will lose their jobs.

Consider immigration reform, one of Obama’s top legislative priorities. With a bipartisan group of senators currently working on a bill – and with the Republican Party looking for new ways to reach out to Hispanic voters – it appears to have a decent chance of passing. But many conservatives have made clear that they will only support a comprehensive reform bill if it makes securing the border a precondition of giving illegal immigrants a path to citizenship.

And beefing up border security could become all but impossible if the sequester takes effect – since it will force big cuts in the number of border patrol agents.”

As far as we can tell , with the exception of defense and border security cuts , everything else involves cuts to programs that the federal government has no business doing anyway . It would all be better left to the states . Why do we need to send tax dollars to DC so that they can take a cut and then redistribute them back to the states ? In the private sector that is called extortion .

Remember too that we are not really talking about LESS SPENDING , No , just a slower rate of growth in the spending .And another thing … When Obama says ” sequestration will devastate the economy” and kill jobs , think about how many jobs have been created with his trillion dollar “stimulus” scam . THE GOVERNMENT DOES NOT CREATE JOBS ! Except taxpayer funded jobs and that does not ” GROW THE ECONOMY ” !

“I’m also issuing a new goal for America,” declared President Obama at his “State of the Union” on Tuesday. We’ll come to the particular “goal” he “issued” momentarily, but before we do, consider that formulation: Did you know the president of the United States is now in the business of “issuing goals” for his subjects to live up to?

The State of the Union is the opposite. The president gives a performance, extremely animatedly, head swiveling from left-side prompter to right-side prompter, continually urging action now: “Let’s start right away. We can get this done. … We can fix this. … Now is the time to do it. Now is the time to get it done.” And at the end of the speech, nothing gets done, and nothing gets fixed, and, after a few days’ shadowboxing between admirers and detractors willing to pretend it’s some sort of serious legislative agenda, every single word of it is forgotten until the next one.

In that sense, like Beyoncé lip-synching the National Anthem at the Inauguration, the State of the Union embodies the decay of America’s political institutions into a simulacrum of responsible government rather than the real thing, and a simulacrum ever more divorced from the real issues facing the country. “Over the last few years, both parties have worked together to reduce the deficit by more than $2.5 trillion,” said the president. Really? Who knew? “Now we need to finish the job.” Just one more push is all it’ll take.

What’s he on about? The annual “deficit” has been over a trillion for every year of Obama’s presidency. The cumulative deficits have, in fact (to use a quaint expression), increased the national debt by $6 trillion. Yet Obama claims Washington has “reduced the deficit” by $2.5 trillion, and all we need to do is “finish the job.” “